John Proops (1848-1896) - Baker, Miner, Firefighter

Bing AI

John Proops was born on January 17, 1848, in Bristol, England.  After the death of his mother in 1856, his father moved the family to Charles Dickens’ London.  Young John was apprenticed to a baker and, in 1867, he shipped out to Adelaide, Australia, as a baker.

Settled by English debtors and convicts in the 1700s, Australia was a wild ‘n wooly outpost of the British Empire.  From Adelaide on the southern coast, Proops walked to Melbourne, stopping to work at sheep and cattle stations along the way.  From there, he went to Ballarat, where the discovery of gold had sparked a gold rush similar to the 1849 one in California.  Later, Proops returned to Melbourne to work as a journeyman baker.

While in Melbourne, Proops met and married Hannah Franks on February 18, 1873.   Their daughter Rose was born in 1874.  Thereafter, Proops became the chief cook and baker at the Government Orphan Asylum at Randwick, near Sydney, where sons Harry and Charley were born.

In 1881, Proops moved his family to San Francisco and then to Tombstone, but misfortune dogged his steps.  Only ten days after arriving there, his son Charley died of gastric fever.  Proops opened a bakery in Tombstone, but it did not pay enough to support his family.  After two years, he gave it up and turned to hauling freight from Kingston to Globe until his team of horses was stolen.  Eventually, he found work at the new courthouse in Tombstone. 

In May 1887, Proops came to Phoenix in the course of delivering a load of furniture for Mr. B. A. Fickas from his house in Tombstone.  He found employment first as a porter at the Commercial Hotel and then as the janitor of the city hall and gardener of the adjacent plaza.

Proops was said to have borne his previous financial misfortunes with a light heart and cheerful disposition.  A sociable fellow, Proops joined the volunteer fire company, the Ancient Order of United Workmen (A.O.U.W.) and the Foresters.

It was in the performance of his duty as a firefighter that he contracted his final illness.  On Friday, December 29 or 30, 1895, the volunteer company was called to a fire on East Madison Street.  Thoroughly drenched by the hoses and going home in the morning cold, Proops took a chill that turned into pneumonia.  He succumbed on January 6, 1896.

On the day of Proops’s funeral, the fire house lowered its flag to half-mast.  His comrades from fire company, the Foresters and the Ancient Order of United Workmen turned out to bury him in Phoenix’s A.O.U.W. Cemetery.

And there he remained until his widow Hannah died in 1903.  She was one of the first to be buried in the newly-opened Beth Israel (Jewish) Cemetery at 35th Avenue and Van Buren, and their son Harry had his father’s remains moved there as well.

 -by donna carr